US EditionVideo. Film of the Week: “Wuthering Heights”: Horny yet Vapid Take on Brontë
Emerald Fennell’s adaptation highlights sexual energy and stylized design but faces criticism for casting Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, which some say erases the novel’s racial ambiguity.
- On Friday, Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights opened in theaters via Warner Bros., provoking intense pre-release controversy with its deliberately sexualised, modernised interpretation and an R rating.
- Drawing on her reputation for provocation, Emerald Fennell, director and writer, shaped a shocking approach to Brontë's material after Promising Young Woman and told the BBC `It's, like, primal, sexual.`
- Casting Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff sparked whitewashing accusations amid the novel's racial ambiguity; other adaptations cast actors of colour like James Howson and Daryl McCormack recently.
- Critics warn the decision to cast a white actor misses a rare leading role for actors of colour and overlooks Heathcliff's themes of power and exclusion, unlike recent period dramas such as Bridgerton.
- The film's interiors feature surreal set design elements like Catherine's bedroom painted to match her skin, while costume designer Jacqueline Durran favours exaggerated, period-blending looks inspired by 1950s melodramas, and the title card signals a stylised fan fiction approach.
15 Articles
15 Articles
Review: ‘Wuthering Heights’ has lots of smouldering but doesn’t catch fire
In Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights, bad timing blights the passion between the aristocratic Catherine Earnshaw and the socially inferior Heathcliff. Emerald Fennell’s version of the 1847 novel grapples with timing too. Her knowingly anachronistic Wuthering Heights is tailored for Gen Z, but Gen Z already has Bridgerton.A contemporary view of the English class system; the use of Charli XCX’s songs in a period drama; costumes made o…
Gen Z Is Reading 'Wuthering Heights' For The First Time. Here's Why They're Concerned About Emerald Fennell's Film
There’s a moment in the trailer for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights where the text “The Greatest Love Story of All Time” flashes across the screen, soundtracked by Charli XCX’s “Chains of Love.” For some members of Gen Z who read Emily Brontë’s book for the first time in advance of the film, it’s no such thing. In advance of the February 13 premiere of Fennell’s film adaptation, a new wave of readers arrived at Brontë’s novel to offer thei…
By Leah Dolan, CNN. To have even a chance of enjoying Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights," you must let it envelop you. Every cracked egg yolk, every inch of snail slime, every glistening raindrop on screen—everything is designed to remain slippery on the surface, never going beyond the skin. The British writer-director's third film, which opens Friday, has polarized audiences since the first trailer.
‘Really just wants to be Bridgerton’: Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’, reviewed
The controversial ‘adaptation’ of Emily Brontë’s famous novel has finally arrived. So what did the founder of the Support Group for Concerned Citizens Against the Saltburnification of Wuthering Heights think? Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” opens with a public hanging. It’s quite effective: the horror, and the suggestion that the crowd is somewhat turned on by watching a man suffocate, stiffy and all, to death. It certainly set a tone. I s…
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